She had said this the night before she died, when for a moment they were alone in the house, and when her eyes looked so big.
There was a tiny bit of land which had belonged to the children’s father, and which was theirs now, but it had given nothing that year; the crop of olives had been very poor indeed, the rains had come out of season, and the wind had blown every single almond off the trees; so that even the poor bits of clothes that Mattina was to take with her to town in her bundle had been cut down from some old things of her mother’s, and Kyra Sophoula who was a neighbour, had taken them to her house to stitch them.
By this time to-morrow, thought Mattina, who had got down to the Narrow Beach and was passing before the open gates of the Naval School,[4] it would be nearly time for the steamer to leave; her uncle would take her in his boat and she would climb up the little ladder at the side of the steamer up to the deck. She herself, she, Mattina, would be one of those people whom she had so often watched from the shore, one of those who were going away to strange parts, who were leaving the island.
She stopped to shift her load of branches higher on her back, and a sailor who was standing by the gates took a step forward and held it up for her while she took a firmer grasp of the thin rope which kept it together.
“God give you many years,” she said to him, looking down. She did not like speaking to strangers, but she remembered what her mother always used to say to anyone who helped her, and since she was alone now it was for her to say it.
The man laughed.
“The load is bigger than the maid who bears it,” he said; then looking down at her curiously, “Whose are you?”
“I am Aristoteli Dorri’s.”
“He was a sponge-diver, but he died last year.”